Description
Book SynopsisAndré Siegfried (1875–1959) was a leading figure in French cultural and academic life for over five decades. Exploring the writer’s life, career, and controversies, France in the World examines the entanglement of liberal and racist thinking during the early twentieth century.
Trade Review“It is too easy to view Siegfried as ‘a man of his time.’ Instead, Kennedy aligns Siegfried's eclectic and wide-ranging theories with a racial and ethnic essentialism that is linked as much to eugenics and racial science as it is to the soft prejudices of his class and era. Revealing this thread throughout the academic’s entire life work, France in the World makes a devastating, convincing, and important argument that transcends the case of Siegfried and can be widely applied to a whole generation of interwar/postwar intellectuals.” Seth Armus, St Joseph's College and author of French Anti-Americanism 1930¬–1948: Critical Moments in a Complex History
"Kennedy’s intellectual biography of the French political scientist André Siegfried offers a multifaceted and insightful, if ultimately negative, appraisal of the legacy of this influential thinker. Recommended. Graduate students, and faculty.” Choice
“André Siegfried (1875-1959) was that political oxymoron, a liberal-conservative. The label might appear to defy definition, but Sean Kennedy’s well-researched and judicious intellectual biography of the man gives flesh and meaning to the term.” H-France
